Danielle snuck around the Systemist meeting with the dinner pot and made it back to the building without incident; whether because the Systemists had learned all they wanted to from her, or because her Skill successfully deflected any notice she might have been risking, she couldn’t say. She got down into the walkway near their room and found Heather and Cassy camped in the doorway, so she ended the Skill to keep it from getting weird with them.

  “We can’t take you anywhere,” Heather joked.

  “You can take me out into the woods a few hours away from the nearest crowd,” Danielle retorted. “In fact, the sooner the better!” she stepped around the two of them and put down the pot in the kitchen.

  Akari and Sadie reached the door a moment later. “Did Danielle come in here?” Akari asked.

  “Yes, didn’t you see her?” Cassy asked. “You were right behind her.”

  “It’s that Deflect Notice Skill,” Sadie said. “I’m used to it from school, but if you don’t keep track of her while it’s on, it’s easy to end up not being able to find her again until she drops it.”

  “Oh, no wonder it felt like she came out of nowhere,” Cassy said.

  “She dropped the Skill right when she got to the door,” Heather said. “Like Sadie said, I’m used to it from school; she used to do that coming into our pod in the dorms all the time.”

  “I’m in the kitchen with the food!” Danielle called. “Close the door already!”

  “Why did you have the door open, anyway?” Akari asked.

  “Cassy was listening to you guys talk out there,” Heather said, “and I was enjoying the fresh air. It was a nice breeze, but now it’s really starting to get kind of windy.”

  “Yeah, it probably blew in those clouds,” Akari said. “What do you want to do if it turns out to be raining tomorrow?”

  “Hide inside all day and pretend we’re gone anyway!” Danielle said fervently.

  “I think you handled it all pretty well, for what it’s worth,” Cassy said. “You were respectful to them without giving false support to their beliefs.”

  “Thanks,” Danielle said with a sigh. “It was all incredibly stressful, though. I hope this ‘senior in the System’ thing doesn’t turn into a whole thing.”

  “I’m sure some of them will level up and take over that role pretty soon,” Akari said. “If you’re lucky, that Zephyr guy will take credit for figuring out the elemental Class unlock too, and you’ll fall off their radar.”

  “Let’s just eat dinner,” Sadie said. “We can fret about all the public speaking and whether people remember the important parts or not tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, and after dinner I’m going to hide in my blanket and read for the rest of the evening,” Danielle said.

  “Do you want to leave early in the morning, though?” Akari asked. “Close to dawn? Remember, we’ll be outside tomorrow night – no lights once the sun goes down, except the campfire.”

  “I could live with going to bed early, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Danielle said.

  “I like the idea of getting out of town before the Wolves get up and around,” Heather said.

  “I guess I’ll pack everything tonight, so if I’m not awake yet when you guys come for me in the morning, I can get going fast,” Cassy said.

  “Warn your roommates, please,” Danielle requested. “About the early morning, and the fact that you’ll be gone overnight.”

  “Sure,” Cassy said. “It might not be a bad idea to slip a note under Lauren’s door, too, so their party knows if they don’t see us all day it’s not because the Wolves got us.”

  “That is a good idea,” Sadie said. “I think Lauren wanted to talk to Danielle about something, but she wasn’t willing to risk getting dragged into a conversation about religion. This way, she won’t waste time looking for her while we’re away.”

  “OK, I’m going to start a list – actually, no, I’m going to use the Things to Bring Fishing list – ” Danielle’s System brought up the list without further prompting, so she continued, “add items to list: note to Lauren. Small crafts. Drying racks. Foraging bags. No further entries. Close planner. Ahem. I need to work on the prompting there, but the point is, anything I think of tonight is just going on the list, I’ll do actual packing in the morning.”

  The others chuckled at her accidental Trait activation, but also gathered around the counter to eat supper. For variety, they ate their rabbit hot-pot over a bed of the greens Heather had foraged the day before. Sadie made sure Danielle ate more purple tomatoes to ensure she could enhance another bag in the morning. Cassy asked Akari how her book was, and Akari regaled them with a story about a Sent hunting party that got lost in a snowstorm on the slopes of the mountains and ended up spending several days (and unlocking several Skills) huddled up with a herd of sheep to survive the cold.

  Cassy commented that if you could get the sheep to tolerate you, you could get sheep’s milk for dairy foods. That triggered a long but mostly speculative conversation about how they might go about keeping food animals as Sent – it was an open question whether wild predators or jealous peers would cause more problems. When that conversation ran out, they all went back to their books for the rest of the evening, which was barely more than an hour by then, considering when they wanted to be up.

  Danielle figured it would be long enough to finish A Lost Boy’s Treatise on Finding Oneself, and the last chapter held a very interesting tidbit of information. Danielle must have made an excited sound, because Cassy looked up and said, “What was that for?”

  “I was right – the Treatise does have more details on getting Careers,” Danielle said. “If you do the search at an Access Point, you get immediate results!”

  “Really? I thought it needed time to watch your actions and stuff,” Heather said.

  “It works differently,” Danielle said. “Instead of evaluating what you do for the next two weeks, the Access Point goes on what Skills you’ve used or unlocked since the last time you used an Access Point; so theoretically, if you started an Interface-based Career search, then after it resolved you went to an Access Point immediately and did one there, you might get a different result. Even better, if the first result matches your active Career, an Access Point search will evaluate again looking for a ‘hobby result’ and give you a chance to take the second most appropriate Career your recent activity could unlock. Oh, and if you do an Interface-based search, and it finds for a new Career, you just get that Career whatever it is; but with an Access Point-based search, you have a choice to accept or refuse.”

  “Oh, wow; that’s a lot better,” Sadie said. “Why didn’t the Rangers tell us about that one?”

  “Beats me! Maybe they just mentioned the Interface way because it’s something you can do without leaving camp if you have to, or because it’s free that way, or maybe it’s one of those ‘do it the hard way and you end up stronger’ things,” Danielle said.

  “Oh, is it not free at the Access Point? That’s kind of an important detail for most of us, Danielle,” Sadie said with some exasperation.

  “Oh – right, yes, that is a downside; it costs 25 mana to trigger the search, and if it doesn’t find anything or if you refuse the option it gives you, the mana is still gone,” Danielle said.

  “That’s probably why, then,” Cassy said. “With the long way, you might still develop new skills or even unlock new Skills, and even if worse comes to worst and you don’t get anything, you don’t really lose anything either.”

  “You just explained how doing it the slow way might make you stronger, too,” Danielle said. “Oh, and let’s not forget that the Access Point way does require your new career to be based on System Skill usage, not activity in general; so it’s less likely to give you new Skills in areas you don’t already have them. On the other hand, if I just want to add mana-release channels for possible dangerous mana bursts – like, say, the one I’d get if I had to push Vince himself off the balcony next time instead of his sword – this way will get me fast results.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Do you really think it’ll come to that?” Heather asked worriedly.

  “Well, I mean, hopefully not. He seems to be kind of trying to stalk me though, and I doubt it’s because he wants my autograph,” Danielle said. “I’m not going to go after him, but if he runs at me with a drawn sword again, I don’t want it to be a lose-lose battle where I either die or get locked outside.”

  “You’ve got your absorption pointed at your Class anyway, though,” Akari said. “I mean, you do, right?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Danielle said. “But that’s not as deep an absorption pool, so again, having extra Careers to channel excess mana seems like a great idea right now. If we get a good haul of fish and snare-meat tomorrow, then I want to cook and dry it on Tuesday, and try to get to the Access Point Wednesday or Thursday. I know it’s not as urgent for the rest of you, but are you up for it?”

  “It might be kind of cool to go on Thursday or Friday and make it kind of a two-week milestone,” Akari said. “Like, Behold, this is what we’ve accomplished in our first two weeks!” She gestured dramatically.

  “I like that,” Sadie said with a grin.

  “Me too,” Cassy said. “I promised my parents I’d write letters to send at Fall Fair, and that would make a great first letter.”

  Heather gasped “That’s a thing you can do?” she asked.

  “What – send letters?” Cassy asked, confused.

  “To the Inside?” Heather pushed. “I didn’t think Sent were allowed contact with the inside!”

  “Oh, uh, I mean – oops?” Cassy said blushing deeply.

  “What do you mean, oops?” Heather said.

  “You can, uh, send letters to Rangers, or other Sent, or to Returned,” Cassy said. “Um, not to regular Insiders though. I wasn’t supposed to mention the letter thing, because of that.”

  “Oh,” Heather said flatly. “You can send mail to your parents because they’re Returned, but nobody else can.”

  “Yeah,” Cassy admitted. “Sorry for getting your hopes up.”

  “Can they send mail to you?” Danielle asked.

  “Only once a year, at Summer Solstice, like any other parents,” Cassy said. “They remembered that, so they warned me about it. Please don’t repeat my mistake and spread this whole mail thing around – most people won’t even know mail is a thing until Fall Fair at the earliest, and Summer Fair more likely.”

  “Why don’t they let the parents send mail at Winter Solstice, when people usually do the big family thing?” Danielle asked. “That seems like it’d be a great time for a morale boost.”

  “Beats me,” Cassy said. “Maybe the Rangers will know. Just be careful who else is around to hear if you ask them.”

  “Right. Well, I’m keeping a letter diary for my parents, too, though,” Danielle said. “I bet they’ll like hearing about the two-week progress, even if they don’t get to read it until I get back Inside.”

  “I’m going to write a letter to Cassy’s parents,” Akari said. “Maybe they can bend the rules just a little and let my parents know I’m doing OK. Even if they have to censor the details, I bet they can find some way to get the basic idea to them.”

  “You’re welcome to try, but I can’t make any promises,” Cassy said. “They told me what my rules were supposed to be; they didn’t tell me what their rules are, but they have to have some.”

  “It’s worth a try, if we remember at the fair,” Sadie said.

  Everyone went quiet after that, and turned back to their books – either seeking distraction from thoughts of home, or returning after the distraction of Danielle’s exclamation, or both. Danielle finished the last chapter and put the book back on the shelf. After checking her watch, she wrote her daily journal entry before telling everyone else it was time to get ready for bed. Danielle did the dishes, muttering to her System about things to remember in the morning, while Akari and Sadie walked Cassy down to her room. When they got back, Akari said, “Cassy reminds us to check mana and consider our savings.”

  “Danielle can do it in the morning, after she makes the next bag!” Sadie said.

  “If it’ll make you happy, sure,” Danielle said, half-joking.

  Everyone took their turns in the bathroom, with Danielle volunteering to go last “for night-sight training reasons.” Akari wound the alarm clock and set it for 5am. Danielle turned out the main lights, and navigated to her bed by the faint light from the nearly-closed bathroom once again. There was also a sliver of light coming under the room door, since it wasn’t fully dark outside yet; it occurred to Danielle that the solstice must be close – it was the right time of year, and if a night that lasted less than eight full hours wasn’t the shortest night of the year, surely it had to be close, right?

  It wasn’t full light when the alarm clock went off in the morning, but it wasn’t full dark either. Danielle got up to turn off the alarm, again telling the others (and thus the System) that she was doing it for the Skill training. Once the light was on, she immediately got into her footlocker for a purple ring, and clipped it open like the last one. Sadie got up and purified the rabbit hot-pot, then set about actually making it hot. Heather checked for hostiles, finding the usual marker in a higher room on the front side of the building, but none near the door. Akari took her to pick up Cassy, which made Heather extremely nervous, even though Akari pointed out that she had just proven there wasn’t anyone hostile anywhere they could see who was down in the walkway.

  Danielle got the ring turned into a clip and fastened on to one of the scavenged bags, then started packing her own bags while she waited for Cassy to arrive. She attached the tent under her expanded bag, and added the distiller, oil lamp, oil flask, canteen, and weather gear, all just as they’d been shown on Decision Day.

  “Do you think it’ll be cold?” Sadie asked from the kitchen.

  “I think we don’t have sleeping bags, and even if it’s not cold, we’ll be on the ground, so every bit of padding will help,” Danielle said.

  Cassy arrived, and it was clear she’d had some similar thoughts; she had all her regular day-trip gear in her Decision Day bag as usual, and the tent attached to the rings underneath; but she had the rest of her bulkier Decision Day gear packed in her canvas ‘school’ satchel.

  “Good morning!” Danielle greeted her. “Time for breakfast! I see you brought your weather gear; did you remember ibuprofen in case of carrying aches? Crafting projects to do while we wait for traps? Bags to collect forage? Your first aid kit?”

  “All of the above,” Cassy said, then yawned. “I’m glad we’re doing a hot breakfast before we start walking, though.”

  “It’s actually not quite ready yet,” Sadie said. “Five more minutes.”

  “Well, then, it’s time for Cassy to watch me use my enhancing Skill!” Danielle said cheerfully.

  “Ooh! Let me get out my notebook,” Cassy said, perking up and coming in past the kitchen.

  “Can I go back to sleep for five minutes?” Heather asked plaintively.

  “Are you packed?” Danielle asked. “Weather gear, tent, first aid kit, canteens - ?”

  “All right, I get it, I’ll pack,” Heather said, then she also yawned widely. “Ugh. I can’t complain about the time, I’m the one who said I wanted to get out of town before the Wolves got up.”

  “I’ll start filling canteens for everyone,” Akari volunteered.

  There was a pause while the other three residents of 6024 got their canteens out. Once Akari took them to the sink to fill, Danielle turned to Cassy. “Ready? I know it might take more than one try, but see what you can see,” she said.

  “I’m ready,” Cassy said. “On three? One, two, three.”

  On three, Danielle activated Lesser Expand Volume. As before, 51 mana dropped away from her mana pool, and the purple zirconium in the ring took on a muted glow that lasted perhaps two seconds. Cassy watched carefully until it faded away, then reached out and touched the stone; Danielle figured she was asking the System for the enhancement details. There was a pause while she read whatever analysis it gave her.

  “Well, that was amazing, but also complex,” Cassy said. “I don’t think spatial expansion is a single symbol, for starters; and I’m not positive, but I think you’re actually mixing in just a smidge of illusion somehow.”

  “Do you think so? It could be a normal part of the enhancement – something to keep the bag from looking weird because of the enhancement, or to make it easier to see what’s inside the expanded area,” Danielle theorized. “I mean, it’s uncanny how normal stuff looks in the footlockers, isn’t it? Considering it theoretically should look 30% smaller or something?”

  “Huh. That could be a thing, I guess? I never thought about it like that before,” Cassy admitted. “Anyway, have you decided who’s using this today?”

  “Nobody on the way out,” Danielle said. “I’m just going to put it inside my backpack. On the way back, whoever has the most need for extra space can use it.”

  Cassy chuckled. “Not just giving them out, huh?”

  “I’ll gift them to party members when I can do everyone at once,” Danielle said, “or maybe if it becomes obvious that one person has a more frequent need for it, I’ll give one to her first, but unless and until then, consider them loaners.”

  “I can live with that,” Sadie said. “If you keep making one every other day, it’ll only be a week until you give them out.”

  “No promises if anything big happens, but if things stay pretty quiet, yeah, I should be.” Danielle grinned. “Cassy might need that ring of hers back as a second enhancement on her bag, so her roommates don’t flip out.”

  “I still say that’s a terrible idea,” Cassy said, but she sounded amused more than annoyed.

  “Speaking of making enhancements I don’t technically have the Skills for,” Danielle said, “care to guess which color is most likely to accept ‘light’ or ‘fire’ as an enhancement?”

  “Well, fire is one of the infra-vision colors, I think,” Cassy said, “thought you might have some luck with red; orange is stone, so for sure not that. Uh, but are you thinking of just trying to attach the symbol you learned yesterday to a ring? Don’t do that, it might just make a ring that burns you.”

  “How about light, then?” Danielle asked. “I can think of uses for a ring that glows, you know?”

  “That would be useful, but I don’t know about the color. Pale greens supposedly attract sensory patterns, maybe that? Or Cyan, maybe – though bold cyan is wind-aligned, and the guys you were talking to yesterday thought light was fire-aligned. I dunno, something in the green/cyan range.”

  “I’ll take necklaces in green and cyan then, and see what I can accomplish,” Danielle said. “Maybe just a waste of time, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Food’s hot!” Sadie announced.

  human-visible wavelengths very consistently. Maybe it's because honeybees and bats and butterflies and reindeer and goldfish and birds all use the System, and naturally see their own variations of an expanded spectrum. Maybe it's because humans, given the option to ask the System for more, no longer stick to their natural limits either.

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2